Don't Say a Word
by Vain
Summary: Repost - SSHP Slash. Broken Lullabies: Line A The sequel to Hush Little Baby - Severus reaps what he's sown. Complete.


**Don't Say A Word**  
_Broken Lullabies: Line A  
_- Vain  
03.03 - 07.2003

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**Standard Disclaimer:** I own nothing except the plot. Harry Potter and all the elements therein are the intellectual property / registered trademarks of JK Rowling, Scholastic Books, and Warner Brothers. I am not profiting from this.

**Continuity**: This story takes place after _Hush Little Baby, _which I cannot post due to NC-17 content. Links to alternate locations for "Hush" can be found at my profile, including Skyehawke and mywebpage.

**Warning**: This story is rated for **slash**, language, and some rather **dark** psychological content. While it's certainly not for the kiddies, there's **NO** sex or violence.

**Notes:** Special thanks yous (as always) are extended to **_Apapazukamori_** for beta-ing. Also, thank yous are extended to **_Diagonalist_** (whom I absolutely ADORE and whose kind review not only had me squealing like a 12-year-old, but also inspired the rest of this damn Arc ).

**Do not steal from me **(_see_: "plagiarism")

This story was originally launched under my secondary pen name, "Hanakai." For convenience's sake, I have decided to streamline my fics under my original pen name, Vain. **_SAME AUTHOR._****_ SAME STORY. DIFFERENT NAME._** As a fic is re-uploaded under my Vain pen name, I will delete it from my Hanakai profile. Eventually, Hanakai will be deleted entirely, so please update your faves and bookmarks to reflect this.

_Thank you_ for all your previous reviews—I saved them all—and I hope you all review again. I'm greedy.

For progress notes on the pen name transition or if you have any questions, please see **my** **Livejournal** (linked both my profiles). I hope this doesn't inconvenience anyone & thank you for your patience.

**All that said**, please enjoy and PLEASE REVIEW the story.

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**_"Nought's had, all's spent  
Where our Desire is got without Content.  
'Tis safer to be that which we destroy,  
Then by Destruction dwell in doubtful Joy. _"**

**- William Shakespeare  
_Macbeth_; Act III, Scene 2**

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_I_t's always so cold down here. As though the chill of the water that streams beneath the castle has seeped into the stones and crawled up from the foundations to slither out into my dungeons. At one time I didn't mind. Now, though . . . Now . . .

He looks at me sometimes and I think, _He knows! He knows what I've done!_ And my robes seem a bit heavier and my heart begins to thunder in my breast. I can feel the muscles around my eyes spasm frantically for just an instant . . . and then he looks away.

What do you see when you look at me, Harry Potter?

Pretty little fool. Do you know?

Does it come back to you in dreams? Washed out, colorless waves of muted gray, gasping breaths, and the gentle violation of my hands against you, forcing you down, forcing you low . . . Can you taste me in your mouth? Feel me inside you like you've never felt anything before—like you never will feel anything again? Do you cry out at night like you did for me? _'Professor! Professor!'_ Sweet tears running in liquid glass trails down your plump cheeks, so late in losing their baby roundness for the firm plains of adolescence.

Perfect.

Mouth open, eyes squeezed tight shut, wiry, Quidditch-trained muscles tense and straining in my embrace. I want to feel it all. So perfect.

Hush, little baby. Say my name in that quietly raw voice that only you have. Shhh, little baby. Don't open your eyes.

Don't see me move along the corridors, clinging to your shadows as only I can. Don't see me when my hands clench when you laugh, when my treacherous eyes wander to you—marveling that you can smile, that you let them touch you. That you look me in the eye with your Evans eyes, Potter hair, and arrogant Gryffindor defiance. Lying defiance.

I've seen you sobbing on the floor, crouched and broken in your own blood and semen. Nothing.

Hush, little baby, hush.

You don't know. It's okay.

Close your green eyes so I don't have to see them. Laugh with your stupid little friends, your insipid little friends who know nothing about you, and wash your desperate cries from my ears. Forget to remember that dark, cold night. It's okay.

And I won't say a word.

Boorish. Imperfect. Flawed. The Great Harry Potter laid low in my lap, begging me to touch him, begging me not to.

My hands ache.

It's too cold in here.

Stop looking at me! Watch your potion! Watch the wall!

Watch anything but me.

I can feel your eyes on me—seeing all my impurity, wondering how it's right for one such as _me_ to be so near to one such as _you_. A crouching shadow beneath the blinding magnitude of your light, burning to get closer, terrified of being burned. How can you stand to live so bright? Everything you touch turns to ash. I turn to ash.

Stop touching your mouth. You're so obscene. So beautiful. Not an angel—too much, too Potter, to be ever an angel. Something else then. An incubus all my own, so hideous in my sight that you're beautiful—that I'm blind.

And I cannot stop staring as you carelessly brush the wispy feathered end of you quill over those sultry lips that no child should possess. Oh, I could teach how to sin with that mouth, child! Lead you by the lips into a level of depravation that would make the devil himself weep to see one such as you fall so far. I want to draw you down.

You make me want to sin.

And what would you do, Mister Potter, if I bent down and claimed that iniquitous mouth with my own? If I pressed you hard against the cold, dank walls of my dungeons and pressed my lips to yours sweetly? Chastely? Would you cry out? Would you melt against me? Or would you—with a fool's wisdom—recognize my worship for what it is? Would you see that this is my pedestal and allow me my brief transgression?

Would you lead me not into sin . . .?

I have been there before. So warm, so inviting, so wrong for all the right reasons. And the weight of you in my lap, the depraved perfection of your stretched and swollen lips, the way you cry out and undulate beneath me . . . Exquisite. Shatteringly wondrous. Deliver me from evil.

But you have no idea what you and your damnably green eyes do to me, do you? No memory of the art that I've wrought on your body? No clue of the hunger I forced from the open and bloodied wound of your mouth . . . I made you beg with need as only a child or a monster can feel need. I filled you with something your pubescent mind cannot comprehend. Gentle rape was what I gave you. And from me you've stolen my eyes. You've stolen my voice. You've stolen the flesh of my body and the veil from my soul and left me crumbled, exposed, huddling feebly on the floor before you.

Just as I left you.

And you don't even know it.

I know you feel my eyes on you. Always on you. Wanting things that you understand without knowledge and fear without memory. And I know I should stop. I shouldn't inhale to catch the scent of you as you pass. I shouldn't trail you when you creep out of Gryffindor tower just to know that you're near me. I shouldn't dream of you. I'm obsessed. I know it and I can't help it—don't want to help it. I itch for you. I ache.

You're inside me—invading me every second of every minute of every damn day. Every day. Like I invaded you. Like I violated you. And I can't tell the rapist from the victim because you're _under my fucking skin_, boring down inside like a thousand little worms, sliding to where my body rubs against my soul, and sucking my blood. Drink it long and deep. Leaving me to sit up in bed, hard, shaking, and gasping your name. Unable to remember my dreams—dreams of you. Unable to forget.

So completely perfect and you don't even know it. So hush, little baby. I'll stay behind you where you don't have to see me. I'll be the shadow, laying low, hunkering down, only a pale afterthought of your light. Just let me be with you—near you. So that the feel of you crawling under my skin doesn't drive me insane.

Do you know you're beautiful?

It's okay. Just let me watch you. Let me stand a tad too close. Stare a bit too long. Let me have those moments. Let me . . . let me . . . fade away into silence, so long as the silence is yours.

Shhhhh. Hush, Harry. Don't say a word.

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** _Fin_**

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